Carla Serrano of Publicis on Human Imagination and the Pursuit of Innovation

'We’ve never viewed creative as separate from media or technology, but as something that fuels it'

Carla Serrano

The latest Mediasense new business ranking revealed that Publicis won twice as many new business pitches last year as WPP or Omnicom. What’s driving that success? Muse caught up with Publicis Groupe’s Carla Serrano. Below, she discusses the findings and what’s fueling wins across creative and media.

Muse: Can you describe your role at Publicis?

Carla Serrano: I’m the global chief strategy officer for Publicis Groupe, CEO of Leo N.Y. and president of Le Truc. I help shape strategy and creativity to drive growth and future-proof our business. 

Publicis won twice as many new business pitches as WPP or Omnicom. What’s your secret?

We are connecting data, creative, media and tech to serve and solve our clients’ business and transformation challenges. And while some are waking up to the merits of integrated operating models and scrambling to piece them together, we’ve been making the “Power of One” work for over a decade. Modern marketers aren’t just buying creativity or media anymore, they’re buying a transformation partner and you can’t credibly sell that story if you’re just now trying to implement it. 

Would you attribute this to the early adoption and creation of Marcel, Publicis’ AI platform?

At Publicis, we make big bets … including the launch of Marcel in 2017. As I’m sure you recall, everyone mocked us and called us crazy—but we believed that AI would be a big part of our industry’s future. Turns out we were right. Today, Marcel is much more than a talent-centric platform. It’s the distribution and implementation layer of our AI model. 

Marcel plays a crucial role on the creative side both in spirit and in practice, helping to power all our agencies and especially Le Truc—the only creative collective within a holding company since we launched it in 2021. With Le Truc, we broke down traditional agency silos to bring together the best creative talent from across the entire Publicis network around any brief. At Publicis, our creative practice consists of highly curated inclusive teams co-creating inside an egoless maker culture. We don’t have one CCO, but a wide range of leaders.

Many see Publicis as a media company first, yet more new business last year came on the creative side.

We’ve never viewed creative as separate from media or technology, but as something that fuels it. When you invest in a technology-led production backbone, give creative teams world-class AI tools and fundamentally rethink how talent gets assembled and deployed, you raise the bar for what’s possible. And you do it more efficiently with an eye toward innovation.

Le Truc is worth pausing on here again, because I think it’s misunderstood from the outside. It’s not an agency. It’s a fluid, talent-first model where our best creative minds aren’t stuck inside a single P&L and competitive with others. Think of it like the music industry, where artists from different genres can produce tracks together. This kind of model only works when integration is truly at the core of your business, instead of tacked on as an afterthought. And clients can spot the difference from a mile away.  

And of course, our creative agencies are still, fundamentally, where some of the most powerful ideas come from. What’s changed is the environment those ideas need to work in. BBH and Leo are thriving because they’ve done a great job blending creative thinking and obsession with craft with modern capabilities and tools.

Was this shift expected and will we see more emphasis on creative from Publicis in 2026?

We’ve always believed in the power of creativity and will continue investing in tools and AI that make our work smarter, faster and more measurably effective—and we’re not waiting for anyone to catch up. Most importantly, we will continue to invest in the best creative talent. While others are cutting headcount in the name of efficiency, AI and Wall Street, we are more committed than ever to human imagination, the pursuit of originality and discerning taste.